[Sacrifice Me 08.0] Season Two: Part 2 Read online

  “I have questions about what’s happening to me,” I said, doing my best to sound like a scared child. I had a feeling that would play better than my sarcasm.

  And it did.

  A look of pure empathy entered the woman’s eyes, and she took my hand. “I know this is going to be hard for you at first, Mary Francis,” she said. “But in the end, what you’re doing is for the glory of our entire family. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

  I had a feeling the women in this village knew a lot about sacrifice.

  Tears flooded my eyes, and I breathed in sharply, trying to hold them back.

  I didn’t want to sacrifice anything. I didn’t give a shit about the glory of this family. This wasn’t my family. It didn’t matter to me if I shared blood with them all. My true family was back at Venom.

  “We should go,” the other woman said, ducking her head.

  “My name is Mary Evelyn,” the woman holding my hand said in a whisper. She squeezed it again, but the moment she let go and stepped back, all empathy was gone from her eyes. It was as if she’d switched from friend to soldier in an instant. “Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be back at dawn to bring you something to eat.”

  The two women left, and I was treated to the sound of five deadbolts slamming closed.

  But did they really expect that alone to hold me? Surely, they knew that any witch in this village had the ability to unlock those deadbolts with a simple thought?

  Not that I was brave enough to try it.

  For all I knew, both women were stationed right outside my door, ready to attack me the moment they heard the first lock turn.

  I was trapped in here for now, and as I stood there, staring at the blank walls, I could have sworn they were closing in on me. I blinked twice, grateful when the room seemed to settle.

  The walls weren’t closing in, but something much less visual, and much more frightening was happening inside of my body. The Mother Crow’s soul was seeping in, as if slithering through every crack it could find.

  There was a time when I’d thought there could be nothing worse than what I’d gone through in the dungeons of the Devil’s castle, but now I knew that I’d been a fool.

  When it came to darkness, there seemed to always be a deeper level.

  And somehow, it had just found me.

  Secrets

  Rend

  Questioning the young crows from the village near the University got us nowhere. They didn’t seem to know anything more than what they had originally told us, and wasting time talking to them only ramped my anxiety up to maximum levels.

  Azure had checked on Katy, who still seemed to be locked in the sleeping curse, and then gone back to the club to make sure things were running smoothly there. Silas had disappeared soon after, spouting some excuse about needing to grab some things from his house.

  Mary Anne and Essex were helping Harper and the others, which left me alone in my house, pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace and losing my damn mind.

  We’d been through all our options before Franki was taken, and I wasn’t coming up with anything new. All we knew for certain was that the Mother Crow had moved her village every few months, creating a doorway that allowed the witches who lived there to move from one to the other completely unseen and undetected.

  The spell Franki found in that village was obviously planted there for her to find, so that wasn’t going to help anything.

  I sat down at the coffee table in my living room and looked over the map of known crow village locations. I kept expecting some pattern to emerge, but as far as I could tell, it was completely random.

  As long as a place had trees, it was a possible location. Which meant they could be almost anywhere in the world by now.

  Searching for the current village was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Even if we went from town to town searching, it would take us years to eliminate a small area.

  There had to be a better way. Something I was missing.

  But every time I tried to push my thoughts to the edge, an image of Franki with a stone embedded in her chest invaded my brain and made me want to pick up the table and hurl it across the room.

  How could we have been so close and still fail? How could we have let ourselves fall into such a trap?

  It all seemed obvious to me now. The well-placed book. The feather. All of it. And we had just walked straight through, offering Franki up like a lamb to the slaughter.

  Now, both our lives were on the line, and worse, we only had a handful of days to figure this out and fix it before it would all be over. If I didn’t get to the Mother Crow before the time was up, I would either be thrown in the dungeons or condemned to death.

  Five days. That was all I had.

  But how much time did she have left?

  A soul stone embedded in the chest of a witch might take her power in a matter of a few short days. But this? This was something different.

  Soul-transference.

  According to the spell words Franki had recited from the book, she had said she willingly sacrificed her life for the Mother. And the Mother Crow had called it a soul-transference spell.

  I shuddered as I finally allowed myself to process what that had to mean.

  The Mother Crow was transferring her soul to Franki’s body. But what would happen to Franki when the transfer was complete?

  If she was trapped inside the Mother Crow’s body, we could at least work with that. Use another soul stone to draw her essence out. Find another body?

  I ran a trembling hand through my hair and cried out in frustration.

  It wasn’t going to do me any good to sit here worrying about what would happen if I failed to find the Mother Crow in time. I needed to focus all my energy on getting to her.

  Getting to her first.

  I brought my hand down to my side, an idea forming.

  Yes, according to the Council’s rules, I had to be the first to kill the Mother Crow. I also wasn’t allowed to hurt my competitor in any way.

  But they hadn’t said anything about working with him.

  Dagon was a beast. A true warrior with a bloodlust that was difficult to stomach. But he was also smart and determined. He would be throwing all his many resources into finding the Mother Crow.

  And the same way Silas was helping me with my task, I had to assume the other three Council members were helping their little protégé. They were determined for him to win this battle, so they could put an end to those of us who killed the Devil.

  I stood and began to pace again. Something about that still wasn’t sitting right with me.

  The biggest complication was the story Silas had told us about his father.

  If the three remaining members of the original Council had truly betrayed Solomon and given him up to the Mother Crow to keep him from changing the Brotherhood of Darkness, wouldn’t they be doing everything they could to make sure Solomon remained in that stone?

  So, maybe they weren’t helping Dagon find her.

  Maybe they were doing everything they could to make sure neither of us ever found the Mother Crow. They could throw us both in the dungeons and elect someone new to the Council. Someone with no opposition.

  Chills slithered across my skin like snakes.

  The Council wanted us both to fail.

  It was the only way to keep their secret from getting out to the rest of the Brotherhood. Which meant that they would do anything they could to make sure we couldn’t possibly find the Mother Crow.

  I needed to talk to Silas. And Dagon.

  If it came down to it, I was willing to let Dagon kill the Mother Crow and take the Council seat. I didn’t want it, anyway.

  If I could convince him the Council was scheming to lock us both in the dungeons when this was all over, maybe I could also convince him to vote in our favor when he took his place on the Council.

  I folded the map and stuffed it into my leather bag, custom made by Essex to hold an entire cabinet’s
worth of potions, some spell books, and a change of clothes.

  When I was sure I had everything I might need, I shifted to smoke, flew up toward the Hall of Doorways, and went searching for the door with the image of a goat carved into the surface.

  I walked straight in without knocking or announcing my presence, expecting to find Silas in his coveted library. Instead, I ran into him in the hallway just outside his bedroom.

  “Jesus, you scared me,” he said, quickly closing the door behind him.

  “Taking a nap?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing at the door.

  He absently scratched his neck and shook his head. “No. Just took a shower and changed clothes,” he said. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a long few days coming up. I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to get back here.”

  I eyed the door. It was an innocent enough excuse, but he could have showered and changed at my place.

  Just what secrets was Silas still hiding?

  Nothing To Me But A Nightmare

  Franki

  I tried to sleep, but there was no use. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw things I didn’t understand.

  Or didn’t want to understand.

  Flashes of someone else’s life. Someone else’s experiences. Her hopes and fears.

  I knew who these memories belonged to, of course, but my brain refused to accept it. I didn’t want to think about the fact that the Mother Crow’s soul—the things she’d done in her life and all the things that made her evil—was slowly pouring into me like a faucet left to drip.

  When I even opened my mind to the thought of it, it brought me to my knees, retching in front of the toilet.

  I was worried about Katy, too. Had she woken up after the Mother Crow took me away? Or was she still sleeping?

  These thoughts kept me up all night, worried and sick.

  I had no way to mark the time except for the sudden presence of footsteps somewhere on the stairs. Morning. The energy of the house shifted, even if I couldn’t see the sunlight to know that it was there. I could feel the movement of those around me as they woke and started their duties.

  I’d spent a lot of time over the past six months or so wondering what it must be like living in the crow village. It was so contained and small, but it was still a thriving community.

  What kind of things did they do together? Did everyone have a task to perform? Did they play games together or read books? Practice magic?

  I’d asked Mary Anne about it as much as I could, but I could tell it was painful for her to remember the times she’d spent as a young girl in the crow village. She told me some of what their days were like, but I didn’t press her too much.

  She’d told me that yes, everyone had a set of tasks to perform. Chores that had to get done before there was any time for play or leisure.

  But even leisure time here was strictly regulated. All the younger girls had to study the history of the crows, work on their spells, and have group talks in the afternoons, even after their chores were over.

  The older women were in charge of cooking for the entire coven, and the mothers, middle-aged women, and older teenagers practiced both defensive and offensive magic.

  The way Mary Anne told it, it seemed more like an army of witches rather than a true community, but she mostly had spoken of it fondly, saying that she loved being a part of a family who worked so closely together and spent all their time in one place without distractions.

  To me, it sounded incredibly boring. No TV. No game systems. No boys. It amazed me that the girls who were sent out to meet men and get pregnant ever bothered coming home, but I guess after living in a place like this their whole lives, the outside world might have seemed terrifying.

  The girls here were taught that everyone who wasn’t a crow wasn’t to be trusted in any way. Even romantic love was denied to them, and they were told early on that falling in love with a man was a betrayal of their sisterhood.

  Man, if they would just give me a few minutes alone with some of these girls, I could teach them something about love. I could tell them about the kind of love that lights you up from the inside. That gives you a reason to want to be the very best version of yourself. The kind that makes you feel just how special you really are.

  I twisted the ring on my finger and slid down against the bare wall of my makeshift prison. Should I take it off and hide it? Would they steal it from me and tell everyone that the vampire who’d given me this ring was a monster?

  I didn’t want to risk losing it. It represented everything I’d come to love about Rend. His dedication to alchemy and to helping others. His love for his sister, and the fact that he would have done anything to save her. His love for me, and his promise to marry me and live together for the rest of our lives.

  I couldn’t let them take it away.

  But where could I possibly hide it?

  Even I could feel the energy coming off the strange stone in the center. If I hid it here in the suite, they could simply walk in and go straight to it.

  Besides, when Rend got here, I might not have time to come back to the room to retrieve it. I’d rather keep it with me and pray they didn’t notice it.

  I turned it around on my finger, so the stone was facing inward. It was awkward this way, but if I could keep them from noticing it, they might just leave it alone.

  I sighed and placed my head in my hands, I had to get out of here.

  For half the night, I’d daydreamed about summoning all my power and blasting a hole straight through the wall. If I shifted to my demon form and moved fast enough, there was a slight chance I could make it through the village’s doorway before anyone even realized what happened.

  If I could make it back home to Rend, I could tell him where the crows were hiding, and he could put an end to this whole thing.

  I also considered the option of softly opening the locks on the door and slowly slinking through the shadows. No noise. No explosions or theatrics. Very ninja-like.

  But I had the distinct feeling I was being watched at all times, and despite the five deadbolts on my door, there were probably guards stationed in the hallway just in case.

  It comforted me to imagine all the ways I might escape, but in the end, I was trapped here. I would probably have made it to the exit only to find multiple guards there or some kind of barrier to keep people inside.

  Surely all these witches didn’t stay of their own will. They were prisoners here, just like me. Maybe there were a handful who liked serving the Mother Crow, but I would bet any of the women here who’d had to watch their baby boys be sacrificed right in front of their eyes would have put a dagger in the Mother’s heart in an instant, if given the chance.

  But she ruled them with a heavy hand and with threats of violence if they ever betrayed her.

  And yet, there were those who had gotten away. Or at least that’s what Mary Anne believed.

  After the Mother Crow tried to take the Peachville Demon Gate from Harper, she’d been wounded and several of the witches who had stood by her side turned to fight against her. Mary Anne’s mother had been one of them, and even though I didn’t have proof of it yet, I was pretty sure her mother wasn’t here in this village now.

  And neither was mine.

  I was certain she wouldn’t have just stood by as I was pulled through that portal last night.

  Rend and the others had told me not to assume that my true mother—Mary Kathryn—had ever been trying to help me by sending me those roses and leading me to Venom last year, but I still believed it with all my heart. She’d been doing what she could to try to save my life.

  She was out there somewhere now, hiding from this place and from the Mother Crow.

  Were they all together? All the witches who had gotten free? Did they know where the Mother Crow was now? Was she looking for them?

  I shook my head and stood up. All these questions and worries were giving me a massive headache, and I was starving and exhausted.

  I eyed the be
d for the millionth time in the past several hours and thought about trying to sleep. Maybe if my body and mind were completely exhausted, I would simply pass out in a dreamless sleep.

  I took one step toward the bed, then turned quickly as the first of the deadbolts holding my door flipped open.

  I cleared my throat and touched the stone embedded in my chest. Only a small piece of its surface was even visible, but that part was cool and smooth, and as the next few deadbolts opened, the stone warmed rapidly.

  It’s her.

  My heartbeat skyrocketed, and my mouth went completely dry. Why was she coming in here? Was she going to do something to me?

  I glanced around the room, searching for anything that might be able to help me if I had to fight, but it was the ridiculous thought of a caged woman with nowhere else to turn.

  Unless I was planning to wrap a comfortable quilt around her neck and hang her with it, there was absolutely nothing in here that would be useful to me.

  The door creaked open, and I took several steps backward, but the stone urged me forward, toward her. I scratched at it, wincing at the tender skin that had closed around it. I wanted to stick my fingers into my own flesh and rip it out, but I had no idea what consequence that might have at this point.

  When the Mother Crow walked in, she immediately turned her red eyes on me and smiled. She didn’t bother closing the door behind her, but I saw shadows in the hallway. Guards making sure I was a good little girl and stayed in my place.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Just come to talk, my child,” she said. She motioned toward the couch, and I shook my head, suddenly unable to find my voice.

  I did not want to have to sit down with this woman and talk to her like she was really just some long-lost grandmother I’d been hoping to meet my entire life. She was nothing to me but a nightmare.

  “Sit,” she said, a hiss in her voice.

  She pointed one long fingernail toward the couch, and there was no question in her eyes about whether I was meant to obey her. And somehow, my legs carried me across the room against my will. As if I had already lost some part of myself I might never get back.